Friday's Open Thread

[korinna]

You're free to comment about anything, whether it relates to the interests of the community or not.

Rules

-No nudity, please.
-If you post pictures, please don't make them so big that people have to side scroll. (If you're unsure about a picture, just link us to it instead.)
-No personal attacks.

Comments

[menkui]

The only other thing that I can trace directly to lack of time/resources is the small, recycled dungeons, and I actually kind of admire them for taking that risk. I'd like Origins twice as much if the areas in it were half the size that they are.

It wasn't necessarily a risk, it was something Bioware had to do if they were going to get the game out in a year. But, overall, I'd prefer having a shorter, tighter plot, than to have to repeatedly traverse the same maps over and over and over again. It just made the game drag on for me and during the first act I literally almost returned the game because I was that displeased with it. For me, it's a travesty to have a game which heavily relies on story and characters to be so boring in the beginning (especially since I know a lot of those writers are fellow English majors and they should know how vital the beginning is to keep a player entertained).

I do believe they tried to tack on as many quest as they possibly could just to make you feel as if you were accomplishing something, but in the end quite a few of them were meaningless. And how about all those junk items you pick up that have no point? Or those quest when you end up returning something to a stranger you never met. If they had more time to make decent quest I doubt such time wasters would be a part of the game. And I guess that's what I mean by you can feel they rushed the game because so much of it needed fleshing out.

I'll be completely honest and admit that after act 1, DA2 totally sucked me in. When I completed the game I declared to my sister that it was better than my all time favorite rpg, KotOR. Then I sat and watched her play and all its faults and flaws became glaring apparent when I wasn't immersed in the world. And I guess, what bothers me is I was expecting a ME2 type of improvement and all we got were glimmerings of what could be. In fact, DA2 just felt like an expanded version of Awakenings to me. Which isn't bad because I genuinely enjoyed Awakenings, but Awakenings needed a lot of tweaking and I feel like they didn't do that in DA2.

[anison]

Yeah, but when they recognized that cuts had to be made, they made them in an area where they couldn't be hidden and would almost definitely draw criticism, in order to devote more time to story. That takes guts, in my mind. I do wish they had the time to do everything, but I don't think re-using areas was the world-ending issue some people were acting like it was.

I do see your point about devoting more time to building up quests, but every RPG I've ever played has pointless fetch quests. I don't think those are going away, no matter how much time you spend on development, because there needs to be a balance between quests that are easy and mindless and ones that take a lot of time and effort. I kind of appreciate the quick infusion of cash and XP you get from acting as Kirkwall's informal Lost & Found--and at least you can't realize after the fact that you sold the item or failed to pick it up in a locked area or something. Origins has a sidequest to find something like 10 garnets, and I swear there are only about 15 acquirable in the entire game. By the time I got the quest the first time, I had already sold 7 or 8 of them because I thought they were just there as sellable loot, like every other gemstone in the game.

As for the junk, it does seem like a roundabout way of giving you money. I'm not sure what their logic on that was, other than making sure there were sufficient "loot items" to keep people feeling like they were being rewarded without having to give them gobs of cash. When you loot a crate, there's a psychological difference between finding a pair of torn trousers and finding ten coppers. I am really glad they stopped just giving you equipment all the time, though--simplified inventory management is one of the real improvements.

Overall, I guess I'm just more willing to forgive gameplay and technical low points if I like the rest of the game? The movies and books that I love most dearly are also pretty dang terrible from an objective quality standpoint.

[menkui]

Environment plays a huge role in story structure. Think of Charles Dickens', Bleak House and how the house itself was as much a character as Lady Dedlock. When you limit your environment you are also limiting your story. I think they forgot this when they decided to focus so much on story structure, plot and dialogue.

There are quite a few things they could have done to the surrounding environment to keep it fresh and new. It's especially important to change the surroundings in DA2 since 10 years pass in the game. To see how the passage of time affected the townspeople and the environment would have been a great way to add to the story. In fact, the city could have changed drastically depending on the choices you made throughout the years. Sure this would have taken time, but not anywhere near as much as creating a whole new map from scratch. Besides, if KotOR 2 created a whole galaxy in a year I believe Bioware could have shown the affects of time on a country

I do see your point about devoting more time to building up quests, but every RPG I've ever played has pointless fetch quests.

But in DA2, I wouldn't even know I was on a pointless fetch quest. I would pick something up go to the map, see a new quest, go to it and discover "oh, I'm just dropping this off". At least in ME2 a plot or a story went along with the item I was collecting. It felt as if it was woven into the fabric of the story. In DA2 it felt like you had a bunch of stray threads that just didn't belong and would have benefited the story if they were just taken out.

Here's the thing, I enjoyed DA2. Was it worth 60 dollars? No. It's okay to like and enjoy games that are riddled with flaws but I think it's up to us to hold the companies accountable so on their next go round they don't continue making the same mistakes.